Last revised: October 19, 2022.

Table of Contents:

• The Site Is Discovered/Uncovered
• Who carved the images into the rock?
• Who is responsible for the site these days?
• The most detailed study of the site
• Three Main Things To Do At Petroglyphs Park

1. The Learning Centre

• The “Ecological Indian” Myth
• Naming The Site – Culture Is A Living Thing

2. Lloyd Walton’s film The Teaching Rocks,

• The Teaching Rocks on YouTube
• Fred Wheatley’s Advice To Anishinaabe Youth:
• A Misrepresentation of the Past:
• Exploring the Historical Past:

3. The petroglyph site

• The Request For No Photos
• Controversy over the Building Over the Rock Face
• Inside The Building
• What do the images  “mean”?

Useful Links For Further Exploration

Definitely check out the Comments section at the end of the post for what some readers make of all this!

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N.B. The term Algonquian (also spelled Algonkian) refers to one of  North America’s largest indigenous language families. Individual tribes or First Nations like the Innu, the Abenaki, the Mikmaq, the Algonquin, the Nipissing, the Ojibwe (Chippewa in the U.S.), and the Cree all speak a version of Algonquian.

(See here for a primer.) These people know themselves as Anishinaabe, the Original People.

A one-hour drive from Peterborough and the Canadian Canoe Museum, and we were approaching the entrance to Petroglyphs Provincial Park.  It is a day-use-only park with hiking trails, but its real reason for existing is the 90′ x 120′ outcrop of gently sloping white marble (limestone) in the center of the park.

Previous Post: Peterborough’s The Canadian Canoe Museum  – Journey Into An Epic Past

Peterborough’s Canadian Canoe Museum – Journey Into An Epic Past

Related Post: Anishinaabe Rock Art

Anishinaabe Rock Images

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The Site Is Discovered/Uncovered

In 1954, a prospector, Everett Davis, sat on this rock face as he surveyed the area east of Eels Creek and north of Upper Stony Lake. He had been there before but had never noticed anything special; this time, the sun’s light hit the rock just right, and the images came out of the rock – some recognizable as humans or animals and others more abstract or fantastical.  As he pushed away the leaves and moss covering some of the sloping rock outcrop, more and more petroglyphs were revealed.  He did not know it at the time, but he was standing on one of the largest petroglyph sites in Canada. He also did not know that someone else had come upon it thirty years before! As the ministry account of the park’s history (see here) notes:

Davis found the site overgrown and covered in places with grass, shallow-rooted plants, and deadfall.  In the photo above, the debris has been cleared away. The cavities of the petroglyphs look like they have been coloured. The Sweetman/Gooding crew used charcoal crayons to aid in their visibility and identification. In the mid-60s,  the Vastokas team also used charcoal crayons to make yet more glyphs easier to see.

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Who carved the images into the rock?

Since 1954 – and especially since the late 1960s –  the site has seen increasing numbers of curious visitors. Wild theories popped up to explain the nine hundred or so marks and images – many of them difficult to see – hammered out of the rock face. Who put them there? Phoenicians, Vikings, and Celts were just some of the suggested answers.  As entertaining as they may have been, the explanations of people from far away do not stand up to any serious examination of what we know about those cultures and their iconography.

The answer lies much closer to nearby Stony Lake.  The territory lies on the southern edge of the Canadian Shield. Before the arrival of the Europeans, it was in the cultural transition zone between Algonkian-speaking communities (the Anishinaabeg) to the north, who lived in small mobile hunter-gatherer (foraging) bands and Iroquoian-speaking communities (the Wendat and Haudenosaunee) with their larger and more advanced agriculture-based villages to the south.

The answer to who hammered out the images on the relatively soft limestone rock face can be traced back to one of these two Indigenous Peoples. Since there is no evidence – for example, common iconography at other sites –  connecting the Iroquois with the petroglyphs,  we are left with one of the Algonquian-speaking peoples.

Many of the images on the rock have parallels with pictographs at other sites on the Canadian Shield known as Algonquin, Ojibwe, or Cree. Oiseau Rock on the Ottawa River and Mazinaw Rock in Bon Echo Park are two well-known Anishinaabe pictograph sites. Thus, placing the petroglyphs in an Algonquian context fits the evidence best.

 

Anishinaabe Pictograph Sites In Ontario

The map below (see here for the source) shows the extent of the Iroquoian world before contact with the Europeans. Note that the northern boundary passes just below the north side of Stony Lake and shows the estimated extent of Wendat – i.e. Huron – territory before 1550.

The map is from a 2015 paper titled “Current Research on the Historical Development of Northern Iroquoian Societies” by Jennifer Birch in the Journal of Archaeological Research. It represents the current consensus view of archaeologists on the extent of Iroquoian settlement during the 1000-1550 CE period.

Burleigh Falls and Stony Lake mark the southern edge of the Canadian Shield.  While the Iroquoian-speaking groups were not a people of the Shield, the Anishinaabeg certainly were.

Since carbon dating a petroglyph is not possible, the discovery of other datable material at the site helped set a rough parameter for when it was used.  Found in the crevasses of the rock were bits of pottery – the remains of small offering bowls? –  which were dated back about 1000 years, placing it in the Woodlands Period of pre-European Contact archaeology.  At the very least, this puts the creation of the petroglyphs pre-contact – i.e. before the arrival of the French in the early 1600s.

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Who is responsible for the site?

In 1976, the Ontario government of the day created a new park – Petroglyphs Provincial Park.  Since 1990 Ontario Parks has managed the site along with nearby Ojibwa Curve Lake First Nation members, whose ancestors first moved into the area in the early 1700s. Their present community is found on the peninsula between Lake Chemong and Buckhorn Lake, southwest of and above Burleigh Falls. (See here for a Google map view.)

It is about a forty-kilometre hike and paddle from the petroglyph site to their community. However, the area may have been considered the hunting grounds of one of their families before the lumbermen, farmers, and miners started arriving in the 1850s.  While the Ojibwe community has no direct link to the petroglyphs, the 2015 Park Information Guide informs us that –

Today the local First Nation of Curve Lake acts as a steward of the petroglyph site  providing Ontario Parks with guidance in this culturally significant and ceremonial place.

This guidance is presumably because the site’s current “spiritual caretakers” share some cultural traits with the creators of the petroglyphs, in particular, a mythological worldview that they can use to explain the meaning of the images. The ongoing mystery about the exact meaning of the petroglyphs shows how tenuous that cultural connection really is.

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The Vastokas Study of The Site:

For almost thirty years after the site’s discovery, it received only a minimum of attention from authorities. At first, it was completely open, and one could walk over the rock face. Eventually, concerns about the deterioration of the site – and a few examples of graffiti left by unthinking visitors – motivated officials to erect a series of increasingly serious fences to keep people away from the sloping rock face while still permitting it to be viewed. In the mid-1960s, Joan Vastokas (then of U of T) and Romas Vastokas of Trent U in nearby Peterborough began their study of the site with their students. Among other things, they used a charcoal-coloured crayon to enhance some of the petroglyphs so that they could be better seen. Their findings were eventually written up in Sacred Art of the Algonkians, which was published in 1973. Almost a half-century later, it remains the definitive study of the site.  It is also a difficult book to get a hold of – in December 2020, an  Amazon seller had a used copy available for CDN $556.86 + $5. for shipping!  The Toronto Public Library system does not have a single copy.

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The Internet Archive site has a digital copy of the book!

July 2021 Update: A digital copy of the book can be found at the archive.org site! While it cannot be downloaded as a PDF or other file, it can be borrowed for one hour at a time.  Signing up with the Internet Archive site is free.  Click here to access the site.

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Update: After this post was written, but long before I found the archive.org site, I stumbled upon this brief passage from the Vastokas book.  It examines the history of the site and its connection to the First Nations people now living near it.  It  supports some of what you’ll read in this post:

At the turn of the nineteenth century, Stony Lake and the streams and lakes in its vicinity were apparently claimed by the Ojibwa chief Handsome Jack as his hunting and fishing grounds. However, among the interesting details collected by Pelham Mulvaney in 1884 about Handsome Jack, his family, and their lands there is no mention of the petroglyphs.

In 1904, Chief Robert Paudash, a Mississauga from the Rice Lake settlement, recorded the oral traditions concerning the coming of his ancestors from the north shore of Lake Huron to the Trent Valley. Robert Paudash came from a long line of hereditary chiefs and was capable and anxious to record the achievements of the Mississaugas; had he known of the Stony Lake site he would have probably referred to it in the context of the Rice Lake Serpent Mounds, whose authorship he attributed to his forefathers.

In addition, it should be borne in mind that when the Mississaugas arrived in southern Ontario in the eighteenth century, they had already been exposed to considerable contact and trade, and that some of the elements of their new culture might have found their way into the array of engraved forms. There is nothing in the site, however, to suggest European contact.

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What To Do At Petroglyphs Park:

Besides the various hiking trail options, three other activities are available to visitors.

1. It begins at The Learning Centre and its various poster displays.
2. continues with a brief 18-minute Lloyd Walton film overview of Ojibwa culture and
3. concludes with a visit to the petroglyph site itself.

I’ll take a look at each one in turn.  Click on the highlighted text above to jump directly to one of the three.

1. The Learning Centre 

The Visitors’ Centre, also called The Learning Centre, opened to the public in 2002 and is where the visit to the site begins.  While the building has a small gift shop with various souvenirs and a movie theatre with seats for perhaps 80 visitors, the main attraction is a colourful multi-panelled poster display.  We spent some time reading our way through the various snippets of text. I had expected an introduction to the petroglyphs and their meaning to be the main focus, but it soon became clear that something else was being presented here.

The wall in the photo above, nicely decorated with Norval Morrisseau-esque spirit lines emanating from the sun symbol, sums it up.  “A culture is a living thing.”  The folks responsible for the exhibit have used this space to present an updated version of Indigenous spirituality, an adaptation felt to be more relevant to the late 1900s than the original Paleolithic foraging culture.  Pretty much absent is any reference to the animistic beliefs that ruled the lives of the actual people who created the petroglyphs.

The “Ecological Indian” Myth

Since the 1960s, a new Indigenous spirituality has centred on the “Ecological Indian” myth.  One expression of this would be the fictitious “speech” falsely attributed to  Chief Seattle, popular and posterized and found on many university dorm walls in the early 1970s. In the article “The Myth of Chief Seattle,” William S. Abruzzi makes this observation:

I didn’t realize it then, but this modern blend of New Age spirituality and environmentalism as a defining feature of being Aboriginal is now a widely held view.

On the Assembly of First Nations website, for example, I found this statement –

Indigenous peoples are caretakers of Mother Earth and realize and respect her gifts of water, air and fire. First Nations peoples’ have a special relationship with the earth and all living things in it. This relationship is based on a profound spiritual connection to Mother Earth that guided indigenous peoples to practice reverence, humility and reciprocity.        (see here for source)

It left me wondering where a non-Indigenous person fits in.  Presumably not as a “caretaker” since (s)he lacks  “a special relationship” and “profound spiritual connection to Mother Earth.”  This race-based approach parallels the stance taken in many of the world’s religions, also built on the notion that this select group of people has a special relationship with the Great Spirit.  In the Tanakh (the Hebrew “Bible”), for example, this relationship is called a covenant, and those who make it with the Great Spirit are His Chosen People.

Having established this special relationship, the next step is to claim possession of a sacred text containing the very words of that God.  Or, if not a book, then at least some sort of special knowledge for pre-literate societies.  In the case of the Algonkian-speaking cultures, it is referred to as orally transmitted  traditional knowledge supposedly not accessible to “outsiders.”

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Naming The Site 

The Vastokas study described how the site was probably used:

…the suggested role of petroglyph sites in Algonkian culture as sacred places where communion between man and the manitous was possible; “it is said here that formerly, within the memory of the living, the place was visited by Indians who wish to consult the gods (manitous)”61 This statement documents the additional aspect of petroglyph sites in Algonkian culture as oracles, where the manitous might be encountered and where their messages might be received.

While the original purpose of the site can be guessed at –

• a site visited as part of a vision quest
• the shamans’ source of medicines or guidance from resident manitous

The Learning Center repurposes the petroglyph site for interested Anishinaabe as they live their lives in the 21st century.  It has turned into Kinoomaagewaabkong (The Teaching Rocks), a site where select youth were brought by spiritually advanced elders to be introduced to deep religious mysteries. Waabkong may refer to the waabi (white) kong (rock) that the images are carved on; kinoomagge means “to teach.” There are a few different transliterations of the name, including Kinomagewapkong and Kinomägewäpkong.

The name Kinoomaagewaabkong or its translation, The Teaching Rocks, does not appear in the Vastokas study (1973). The 1977 Ontario Govt Park Master Plan does not make use of the term either.  The first reference to the name (that I found) was the title of  Lloyd Walton’s short 1987 documentary. He used the term Kinomägewäpkong and the English translation.

By then, the site had become a destination for visiting participants of the annual Trent University-hosted Elders’ Gathering, held in Peterborough since 1970. It is the likely source of the new interpretation of the site and its name. Earlier use of the name may appear in some of the material published by the Elders’ Gathering in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Wintertime visits were possible with the construction of the building covering the site in 1985.

By 1996, Basil Johnson would include a discussion of The Teaching Rocks in his book The Manitous. He writes:

Besides these sessions, there were other teaching methods that might be regarded as formal. Certain youths, selected for their strength of character, breadth of mind, and their kinship with the manitous were taken to the kikinoomaukaeassin (the teaching rocks), where they were taught the wisdom and the knowledge of the Anishinaubae people by the elders, through stories represented by symbols inscribed on the face of the rock or impressed on birch bark. The purpose of these tutorials was to prepare the candidates to be the future custodians, interpreters, and teachers of the cultural and spiritual heritage of the people. And when their time came and they still led exemplary lives, they would succeed their tutors as “elders,” by virtue not of their age, but of their knowledge, wisdom, and integrity.

His account of the site’s use echoes that of Fred Wheatley in Walton’s film. Johnson gives The Teaching Rock the name Kikinoomaukaeassin, a somewhat different rendition of the name.

Given the Roman Catholic education that both Wheatley and Johnson received as youths, it sounds like they are describing a Jesuit-in-training institution!  In the documentary, Wheatley says –

Years ago a child who was very active, with his legs going who was obviously going to be a smart person would be brought to the petroglyphs to be trained (like a priest). It was not for everybody but for someone who would become an elder and a priest in his own right.

It is unclear why Wheatley would associate fidgetiness with superior intelligence or if only males were taken to the site. If culture is indeed a living thing, then the response today would surely stress that a girl could also become “an elder and a priest in (her) own right.”

Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse: A Novel (2012) also references the Teaching Rocks. It paints a different picture of the site’s purpose:

Then one day Shabogeesick called everyone together in a circle on the teaching rocks where the Old Ones drew stories on the stone. The people were only ever called to those sacred stones when something vital needed to be shared. No one knows where that place is today. Of all the things that would die in the change to come, the way to that sacred place was perhaps the most grievous loss. 

As the eye-catching Learning Center poster says. “Culture is a living thing.”  It does indeed change to suit new realities. The petroglyph site is a compelling focal point of cultural renewal/recreation.

The above poster alludes to the possibility that the Anishinaabe (i.e. Ojibwe) once lived on the shores of the Atlantic at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River.  From details of the various accounts told by members of the Midewiwin (the shamans’ exclusive medicine society) to William Warren in Minnesota in the 1840s,  some scholars date the migration westward towards Lake Superior somewhere around 1350. Others propose a later date.

They connect it to the arrival of the Black Plague along with European fishermen on the eastern shores of North America at that time. If so, it clashes with the vague “since time immemorial” notion of Anishinaabe presence around the Great Lakes.  It is likely as unhistorical a story as the legend of Moses and the Israelites and their similar journey to a Promised Land.

Changing one’s worldview in response to changing times is not uncommon. It is also not uncommon to reinterpret and repurpose older cultural expressions –  like the petroglyphs – which you did not have a hand in creating and which you can make no special claim to understanding. While the sentiment expressed in the poster above is laudable and may well be true to those who now visit the site, there is no basis for the claim that this is what the rock was all about.

The Learning Centre reveals surprisingly little about the meaning of the petroglyphs we are about to see. The primary focus is on Mother Earth and how we should treat it – perhaps given the difficulty of saying much about the petroglyphs, the hope is that this environmentalist focus will give visitors an acceptable alternative lens through which to see the images on the rock face.

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2. Lloyd Walton Film: The Teaching Rocks.

We moved on from the poster displays to the movie theatre.  My brother and I were the only two there that afternoon, but the Park Ranger – I did not get his name – graciously set up the film for us to watch. Entitled The Teaching Rocks, the nineteen-minute documentary-style film was released in 1987.

The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources commissioned the cinematographer Lloyd Walton to direct the project; Fred Wheatley, an Ojibwe language teacher at Peterborough’s Trent U as well as an Ojibwe elder, did the narration. Not clear is if he also wrote the film’s script or whether others, like Peter O’Chiese, the charismatic elder from Alberta, also provided input to the script.

See here for a transcript of the film’s narration, along with some additional commentary.

The Vimeo website, which once hosted the film, had the following brief summary:

A visually arresting film, concentrates on the native art of the Ojibwa tribe. Much Ojibwa history and philosophy has been related through the rock carvings and paintings which are featured throughout this work. The voices of the Elders are heard in the film, describing the tales of creation and existence that mark the group’s iconography. A sense of mystery informs this evocative film as the realization strikes that no individual can expect to penetrate the mythos of the Ojibwa.

The Teaching Rocks On YouTube

In April 2021, the documentary was uploaded to YouTube. See the full-screen version by going to YouTube.

The film begins with a scrolling text which tells us that “the precise meaning of the petroglyphs are carefully shrouded in mystery.”  This puts a positive spin on the difficulty of entering into the minds of those who put these images and markings here 800 years ago.

Given that the documentary is meant to teach us about the culture behind the images hammered out on the rock face, it makes remarkably little use of traditional Algonkian/Ojibwe myths and legends. Missing is any discussion of Thunderbird and Mishipeshu, of Nanabush and the Giant Beaver.

What we are offered instead are modern-day musings on the environment as Mother Earth becomes the central mythic figure.   Walton does combine some nicely filmed scenes of the rocks and water of the Canadian Shield, as well as shots of pictograph sites at Agawa Rock on Lake Superior and Lake Missinaibi, and I think a couple of seconds of  Mazinaw Rock.

Fred Wheatley’s Advice To Anishinaabe Youth:

On top of close-up clips of the animals of the Shield country – the moose, beaver, bear, and heron – the narrator provides a commentary emphasizing the same environmentalist ethos presented by the displays in the Learning Centre.  The narrator, speaking as an elder, tells us that –

We were put on this earth to look after our mother, the earth … Every blade of grass has a right to grow and whenever you set your tipi up, or your shelter, don’t leave it there for long because you will kill the grass if you leave it there. That’s why the Great Spirit has given you a strong body to be able to do these things…

Given that the narrator was an Ojibwe language teacher at Trent University in Peterborough in a classroom in a large concrete block on the banks of the Otonobee River, you have to wonder just what he was seriously advocating that other people do. At the same time, he showed up to teach an Ojibwe language class in a grass-killing structure.

Elsewhere, he says this –

It is up to us to go back to our traditional ways and to try to warn the white man before he has poisoned the whole earth. Don’t contribute to the mess that’s being made…

Consider the usefulness of this elder’s ethnocentric  “wisdom” for today’s young Ojibwe as they try to find a meaningful role for themselves in the world which they are told is poisoned by the “white man,” who is presented as the ignorant and greedy despoiler of “our mother, the earth.”

Romanticizing the past – advocating a return to an indigenous past that never actually existed – surely is not the answer.  And just what do “traditional ways” include?  Do they include: Money? Electricity?   Cell phones?   Snowmobiles? Rifles? Boats with kickers? Literacy?  Modern medicine and surgery?  Hip-hop music?  Gambling casinos? Speaking English or French? A house that you live in all year round?  A teaching job at one of the settlers’ universities? Will “traditional” ways include white dog sacrifices? Special isolated menstruation huts? Vision quests?

A Misrepresentation of the Past:

To emphasize the harmonious nature of life before the coming of the white man, Wheatley tells us of the annual month-of-May  Ojibwe “meetings with the Sioux on the south shore of Lake Superior to exchange medicines.”  The word “Sioux”  is Ojibwe in origin and has the uncomplimentary meaning of  “little snake.”  [For the Ojibwe, the Iroquois were the big snakes.]

Known to themselves as the Dakota or Lakota, the “Sioux” were neighbouring people who lived at the western end of Lake Superior.  When the Ojibwe moved into this area from further east around 1650 to 1700, they battled with the Dakota for control of this land. For generations, there were back-and-forth raids and battles between the two cultural groups for control; the Ojibwe won out, and the Dakota moved further west.

For generations, the Ojibwe were also at war with the Iroquois tribes. This is in the historical record; Wheatley presents a pre-European-contact paradise that never existed.  This may suit his purpose, but it gives those watching the film a false idea of how things were.

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Exploring the Historical Past:

(Access here a PDF copy of George Copway’s 1851 book The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation 

Check out Chapter 5 for his account of those wars. Copway was an Ojibwe from the Trenton area to the east of the petroglyph site. He was born in 1818. Note: He does mischaracterize the relationship between the Wendat (i.e. Huron) and the Ojibway. The two actually fought together to soundly defeat the upper New York State Iroquois in the 1690s.

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Click here to download a copy of  William Warren’s History of the Ojibways, Based Upon Traditions and Oral Statements, written in the late 1840s.  He provides detailed accounts of the Ojibwa conflict with the Dakotas.  The edition linked to here is the free 1st ed.

 

A  much better second edition was published in 2009. Edited and annotated by Theresa Schenck, it also includes an excellent introductory section. The Amazon write-up of the book states this –

 

 

William W. Warren’s History of the Ojibway People has long been recognized as a classic source on Ojibwe history and culture. Warren, the son of an Ojibwe woman, wrote his history in the hope of saving traditional stories for posterity even as he presented to the American public a sympathetic view of a people he believed were fast disappearing under the onslaught of a corrupt frontier population. He collected firsthand descriptions and stories from relatives, tribal leaders, and acquaintances and transcribed this oral history in terms that nineteenth-century whites coul understand,focusing on warfare, tribal organizations, and political leaders.

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See also this article – “The Ojibwa-Iroquois War: The War The Five Nations Did Not Win”  for a comprehensive and well-researched summary that sets the record straight.

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The Ojibwa of Southern Ontario by Peter Schmalz (1991) is another worthwhile book to get. The Amazon summary describes it like this –

The Ojibwa have lived in Ontario longer than any other ethnic group. Until now, however, their history has never been fully recorded. Peter Schmalz offers a sweeping account of the Ojibwa in which he corrects many long-standing historical errors and fills in numerous gaps in their story. His narrative is based as much on Ojibwa oral tradition as on the usual historical sources.

Schmalz provides an excellent summary of the Ojibwa-Iroquois War of the late 1600s. See Chapter 2 –Conquest – “By the Power of the Great Serpent.”  The book is available on Amazon here.

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Today’s petroglyph site is presented as “The Teaching Rocks,” a place where select young people were supposedly taken as a step in the initiation into becoming shamans. Using the images on the rock as teaching tools,  Wheatley states that the young person would learn some of the truths that he would need to become a medicine man in his own right.

It is unlikely that the creators and original users of this rock face used it in this way.  Here, we have a modern repurposing of the rock face to fit in with the reality of a contemporary Ojibwe culture being swamped by external cultural forces. It is an attempt by its political leaders and creatives to develop a focal point for cultural revival three hundred years after the deluge began.

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3. The Petroglyph Site

The Request For No Photos

As we approached the petroglyph site, another sign reminded us again that given the sacredness of the site, no photography is allowed. The stated intent is to reinforce the deep spiritual significance of the site.  Is it because taking photos would rob the site of its essence, just as some of our ancestors believed that their souls would be stolen if their photo portraits were taken? Given the cell phones with cameras that almost everyone has these days, this must be tough to enforce.

I think back at pix I’ve taken on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem,  the Sistine Chapel in Rome, or, more recently, at the most sacred Buddhist site in Myanmar – the Shwedagon Pagoda – with its gold-plated stupa and relics said to be of the Buddha himself.  The Myanmar site even provides visitors with free internet access on the temple grounds!  The reason for the “no photo” rule here feels, more than anything else, like petty politics.  Having let the folks on duty know my view on the matter, I did abide by it.

We walked through a gate in the fence, which I assume rings the entire site and separates it from the rest of the park. The photo below sets the scene as you approach the site.  The structure covering the petroglyph site was built in 1984. The glass walls reach a height of about 40′ (12 meters) and let in a fair amount of subdued light.

Not far from the site, archaeologists – perhaps the Vastokas team –  found gneiss rock hammers that the creators of the petroglyphs used to peck and grind out the images. Somewhere nearby, there are two smaller petroglyph sites. The 1977 Master Plan for Petroglyphs Park provides this information –

Not everyone is happy about the building covering the site.  Joan Vastokas, mentioned above as one of the authors of the still-definitive study of the site, has said that the structure itself is the biggest act of vandalism that has been done to the site!

At the end of the post is a link to a paper written by Dagmara Zawadzka of Université du Québec à Montréal (who studied under Vastokas), which gives a similar negative assessment of the Ontario Parks solution to protect the site.

I photographed the information board – see below – in which the Park officials present the reasons for doing what they did.

My view on the building – while it may not be perfect,  it was the best solution to the realities of the soft limestone rock and the need to protect the ongoing erosion of the petroglyphs from the environment and the impact of visitors walking on the surface of the rock.

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Inside The Building Covering The Site:

Once we entered the building itself, I  did not take any more photos.  For study purposes, it would have been nice to have a set of images that I could examine in more detail at my leisure.  We did have the benefit of having the park official – the same young man who had set up the movie for us – as a guide.  We had him to ourselves for about forty-five minutes, and he gave us a fantastic tour of the rock face, taking us from one end to the other and pointing out key petroglyphs and some of the meanings given to them and their supposed relationship to others nearby.  Only two other people – a young couple – came in while we were there. Their five-minute visit left us wondering why they had even bothered coming all this way.

As you enter the building, there is a rack with pamphlets available; they explain the overall significance of the site, as well as a few of the dominant images. The tone of the pamphlet is more like what I had expected at the Learning Centre.   Also on the wall was a 24″x36″ or so drawing of the rock face and its many petroglyphs. I’d imagine it is from the Vastokas book mentioned above. At the end of the tour, the park official was good enough to take it off its wall hook and bring it outside the building, where I took a couple of photos of at least parts of it.

While this Wikipedia entry tells you that there are 1200 petroglyphs at the site – an unlikely high number – it does not go on to say that maybe 200 to 250 of them are still recognizable.

In the above drawings, a few images jump out, probably because our minds can find some sort of meaning in them. Human forms and animal forms are definitely there, as are objects like canoes. Some are fantastical, and others are more abstract geometric forms.

The photo below was shot in 1970 and is one of a dozen that can be found on Jim Werner’s website. Serpents, turtles, a “rabbit-eared” human figure, the 56″ long crane, the attention-grabbing triangles…obviously, while the charcoal crayon which Vastokas’ students used to colour in the petroglyphs helps us see them better, we are seeing the site in a manner not thought of by the various people who hammered their images out of the rock. One could characterize the colouring of the cavities as an act of vandalism in itself.

Update: I found the following image of the entire site in a Pinterest thread. It provides another perspective of the site –

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What Do The Various Images Mean?

This is where you ask the question – what does it all mean? The first thing to recognize is that the images were not all put here at the same time. It is more accurate to picture the site as one to which the image-makers – the shamans? – came throughout generations to leave their particular mark for whatever purpose.

Having said that, it is important to resist the human impulse to take two adjacent images and create a “story” that explains their connection.  Chances are, they actually have nothing to do with each other. So, what is the key to unlocking their meaning?

There is no Rosetta Stone; there is no “grand theory of everything” which we can apply here. However, the images are the product of a particular culture with its set of myths and stories developed over time to explain all that they needed to explain. And what culture? As already indicated – the pre-European-contact culture of an Algonkian-speaking people like the Algonquin seems like a safe bet.

An interesting feature of the site is the number of crevasses and cracks in the rock face. One, in particular, goes diagonally across the entire rock face. Even more significant, there is a stream that passes underneath, and at least in the past, one could apparently hear the echo of the moving water. The sounds were given a spiritual twist and taken as voices of the manitous who dwelt in or under the rock. A parallel Ojibwe belief would be in the maymaygweshiwuk, who lived in underwater caves associated with rock faces where shamans would leave their ochre images as a part of the ritual of obtaining favour or medicine from these spirits. Many of my posts on pictograph sites on the Canadian Shield have images of such rock faces.

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Female Figure with Menstrual Blood?

Another interesting feature – and one that some people feel uncomfortable dealing with – is the holes at different places on the rock face. The Parks site pamphlet mentioned above discreetly omits this petroglyph from the discussion, even though it may have been one of the first to be put there.  Apparently, a seam of reddish iron oxide runs right through the figure and is thought to symbolize menstrual blood. The drawing can be seen in one of the images above.  An internet-sourced image on the left makes it all clear – the image’s creator has incorporated the round pothole as female genitalia. On the upper body, one can make out a breast. On the day of our visit, a small amount of tobacco sat on top of the outstretched right arm of the female figure, presumably left by someone as a part of a petition or a thanksgiving ritual.

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Camel, Moose, or Mishipeshu?

In the third drawing above, a figure below the female figure has been interpreted as a camel!  Notice the humps?

“Aha,” the reasoning goes, “So the Phoenicians really were here!”

It most likely is meant to represent a moose or caribou.  Another possible explanation – one that comes from traditional Ojibwe iconography – is that it represents Mishipeshu. He is the underwater lynx who is seen as a counter-force to the Thunderbird (Animikii)) who is second only to Gitchi Manitou (the Spirit above all other spirits)  in power.  The famous pictograph of Mishipeshu at Agawa Rock bears similarities to the animal depicted here. It was only after contact with the Jesuits that The Great Lynx came to be associated with evil, right down to the devil’s horns on his head!  Whether the cultural group that created these images actually shared the Mishipeshu myth with the Lake Superior Ojibwe is unclear.

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The Serpent As a Positive Symbol:

Also very common on this rock face are depictions of snakes. Unlike the Christian spin put on the snake – Satan the deceiver in the Garden of Eden – for the Algonquins and Ojibwe, the snake, often depicted with two horns (Mishikinebik), is a positive force associated with the medicine and wisdom that a shaman would have come for.

The Park pamphlet puts it this way – “Because snakes live and move between the spirit worlds, they are often viewed as messengers from the underworld and protectors of the springs.” Look at the first photo of the drawings – not having any photos to double-check, I assume that whoever drew the images did so accurately!  You’ll see three different snake figures with the double horns indicated. There are apparently thirty or so snake images at the site, with some of them incorporating the crevasses and cracks of the rock face.

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A Reference To the Serpent Mounds At Rice Lake?

However, the 1977 Parks document does provide a questionable interpretation of another collection of petroglyphs also featuring a serpent flanked by a row of small circular glyphs:

…one petroglyph depicting a snake with dots signifying eggs is a reproduction of the landscape of the Adena-Hopewell Indian burial ground at Serpent Mounds Provincial Park.  See here for the source, p.36

The image below is the “snake with dots signifying eggs” petroglyph referred to in the quote.

This interpretation can be traced back to the Vastokas’ study from 1973. 

It presumes that David Boyle was correct in his interpretation of the large burial mound as a serpent effigy and the other oval or circular mounds as “eggs.”

A Google search for a site map of the Serpent Mounds area turned up a sketch drawn by David Boyle, Canada’s pre-eminent archaeologist in the late 1800s, after his 1896 visit to the Rice Lake site, the first by an archaeologist.

The so-called snake mound is about 60 meters (200′) long, with the “head” of the snake pointing east/northeast and facing two small mounds. On the south side of the snake are other small mounds. Oddly, Boyle’s ground plan has flipped the layout horizontally; he has the head on the left (i.e.west) side.

To state that what is carved above is a “reproduction of the landscape” of the Rice Lake Serpent Mound is not supported by the facts and the reality on the ground.

While Boyle applied the name “serpent” to the mound in 1896,  the two subsequent archaeologists to visit the site both cast doubt and, in essence, rejected his interpretation –

• Henry Montgomery, after a 1909 visit and
• Richard Johnson, after five years of work at the site with his Royal Ontario Museum/U of Toronto team from 1955-1960.

Below is the Johnson team’s sketch of Mound E, Boyle’s “serpent.”  It lays to rest Boyle’s notion that the mound was meant to represent a serpent and that the serpent petroglyph with a row of dots on either side was meant to reproduce or show “a formal affinity” with the Rice Lake burial mounds.

For a deeper look at the Rice Lake Serpent Mounds, check out the following post –

The Rice Lake “Serpent Mound” – Chronology, Sources, And Cases Of Mistaken Identity

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Mikinak – The Turtle:

Another animal figure which figures prominently on the site is the turtle Mikinak. It is seen at pictograph sites across the Algonquian world and represents the messenger who brings the manitous’ communication to the shamans. At this site, there are a dozen turtle images – one depicted in the image to the left.  One interpretation has the dots as eggs, which symbolize new life. There was even an explanation for the number of eggs – 13? – which I have forgotten. It is best to take many of the explanations with a touch of skepticism and resist the urge to create a story based on nearby glyphs.

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Kitchi Manitou, shaman, or something else?

One unusual image that provokes puzzlement is the one to the right. It seems to show the lower part of a human body and then a sun symbol on a vertical line interpreted as the upper body.

The park pamphlet states:  “This large central figure near the centre of the site is thought by some First Nations to be a carving of ‘Gitchi Manitou…it may also represent a shaman who has been given powers by the creator.”

Given the transcendent nature of Kitchi Manitou (often translated as “Great Mystery”), it seems unlikely to have been thought of in human form. If the top and bottom are indeed one image, then the shaman filled with the Great Spirit is a more likely interpretation.

Missing from the phrase “some First Nations” is the qualifier  “a few members of…”.  Since most members of nearby First Nations communities have moved on from traditional pre-Contact Anishinaabe myth and religion, they would be unlikely to have given any thought to the image’s meaning.

Vastokas devotes a few pages to what she labels the “Sun-Figure” and provides parallels from other glyphs at the Peterborough site and from other pictograph sites.

The most striking one is from the Scotia Lake pictograph site in NE Ontario. It shows the upper body of a human figure with two concentric circles (and perhaps a dot in the very center) surrounded by rays.

Vastokas’ examination of the sun figure image and more can be accessed at the Internet Archive website here.

Grace Rajnovch does not discuss the “Sun Figure” but does examine Anishinaabe symbolism, including the circle and encircled heads. See here for the relevant section in her Reading Rock Art for more. She states that the circle with a dot in the center (or, I assume, a smaller inner circle) can be interpreted as a non-anthropomorphic symbol for Kitche Manitou. That would explain the shaman’s head, infused with the Supreme Ultimate.

Selwyn Dewdney, in his examination of the Diamond Lake site in the 1960s, makes no mention of the Kitchi Manitou interpretation of the symbol and instead points out that two mid-1800s writers give different meanings for it –

Dewdney, Rajovitch, Schoolcraft, Copway – each with a different take on the meaning of this recurring morph.

The eminent Canadian archaeologist J.V. Wright, who worked at the Canadian Museum of Civilization for forty years, provides this summary of the Sun-Figure pictograph, its possible origin,  and its usual interpretation. (Click on his name to access a brief bio.)

[If the Vastokas pre-Contact dates for the petroglyphs are correct, it seems unlikely that the Abenaki would be hunting beaver that far west before the arrival of the French – and before it became an essential item of barter which they had depleted further east. ]

The image below also includes a second circle on a pole, but it is not attached to what one could interpret as legs with a torso. The site’s petroglyph cavities were coloured in with carbon crayons, and those who did the colouring may have emphasized or exaggerated certain aspects of the cavities.

Looking at the so-called Kitchi Manitou image, another interpretation comes to mind.  Perhaps we are looking at two different pictographs, one done by chance on top of the other and not actually related or even done at the same time by the same person.

The fact that we link the two may say more about how the human mind works to create meaning out of coincidence than it does about what the rock carvers engraved in the rock face. Comparing the relative depths of the two petroglyphs at different points might provide some evidence.

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Shaman With Turtle Rattle?

Another image commented on in the pamphlet is one of what may be a shaman or “medicine man.” The object in the figure’s right hand “may possibly be a turtle rattle used in ceremonial practices.  The cone-shaped hat over the person’s head may indicate his/her connection to the spirit world and the power of healing.” The shaman figures I have seen further west share some common elements with this one.  Like this one, they are always standing figures who hold something in an outstretched arm.  That “something” is interpreted to be an otter skin medicine bag. This image from the Bloodvein River is typical –

While the Artery Lake figure does not have the conical hat, he does have what could be interpreted as a spirit line going into his head.  Perhaps there is a parallel there? Here is a drawing from the Smithsonian Institute’s anthropological archives. It depicts a medicine man with a ritual object in his left hand, which he seems to be spinning or shaking  –

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A physically large petroglyph is that of the crane or heron that you see in the image to the right. It measures some 56″ from top to bottom. According to the Park pamphlet, the crane “is a common totem bird among the different Algonkian peoples. Playing a relevant role in the world of shamanism, signified as helping spirits that aid in revealing prophecies, and they are receptacles of the souls of the dead, as birds can read the future.  Members of this clan traditionally are the speakers at meetings.”

In the above photo, you will also find two images associated with Nanaboozoo or Nanabush, the rabbit-eared “trickster” of Ojibwe myth. The next day, we would see a similar ochre pictograph at Mazinaw Rock – a human figure with two large “ears” protruding from his head.  In all of southern Ontario – from Sudbury to the Ottawa River down to Lake Ontario- there are only two aboriginal rock image sites – Mazinaw Rock at Bon Echo and this petroglyph site. Interestingly, both are the most extensive sites of their kind in Ontario – and maybe in Canada.

See here for our report on the Mazinaw pictograph site.

The Mazinaw Pictographs: Listening For Algonkian Echoes

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The walkway takes you right around the site. Every few meters, there is an information board explaining particular images.  Normally, I would have taken photos of them and reread them after the visit.  The pamphlet deals with most of the ones I’ve covered above.  It also has a bit to say about the canoe images, the Thunderbird, what looks like large arrowheads but which could be a shaman’s spirit (the pamphlet’s suggestion) or the silly suggestion made in that Milwaukee Journal at the start of the post (a Xmas tree!).  I haven’t seen anything like it in all the pictograph sites I have been to – or seen images from.

More time and access to photos of different parts of the site would add more substance to my analysis. So would reading the Vastokas’ book!

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Jim Werner’s Website & Photos  of the Petroglyphs:

If you want to see more images of the petroglyphs, the best collection I have found online belongs to Jim Werner; the photos were actually taken by his uncle Robin L. Lyke in the early 1970s.  His website has an excellent discussion and twelve images; you can access it here.

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Questions Answered/Answers Questioned

The drive to Petroglyphs Provincial Park took us about an hour from Peterborough. We had spent the morning at the Canadian Canoe Museum, so we got there at about 2:30. I am glad we took the time to finally check it out.

As is often the case, we left with more questions than we had arrived with – but isn’t that why we travel and check out things we don’t know about?  We came knowing we would see the physical structure over the petroglyph site; we were left wondering about the ideological reconstruction of the site undertaken over the past fifty years.

This post was my attempt to grapple with some of those questions.  I have a feeling that in the coming months, I will be returning to this post, rethinking, revising, researching, and replying to comments of those who may or may not agree with my view of things.

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Useful Links For More Insight:  

1. Petroglyphs of the Kawarthas

A website belonging to Ian C MacFarlane has a comprehensive collection of resources – print and video – related to the petroglyphs, referred to as petroglyphs of the Kawarthas. Click on the heading below to access the material –

Included is a downloadable copy of the Vastokas study of the site, as well as an interview with the Park Assistant Superintendent, Jay Johnson, explaining why the Barry Fell Viking theory of the glyphs’ origins misses the mark entirely. [See here.} [The link is dead when last checked in May 2025.]

2. The Ontario Govt’s 1977  Master Plan for the Park:       

The 1977 Ontario Government “Master Plan” for Petroglyph Provincial Park is worth skimming through.  You can access it here. I also took pp. 32-36, the section on the history of the site,  and put it into a 1.2 Mb pdf file, which you can download here.

Among the statistics in the report were the annual visits for 1974 (14,227) and 1975 (13,613).  The most recent statistics I could find were for 2010 (13,254). If the stats are all measuring exactly the same thing, it would seem that fewer people are visiting now than forty years ago!  If so, I wonder why?

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Zawadzka only sees or chooses to acknowledge the physical building over the site by the MNR, not its ideological repurposing. A consideration of the role played by Trent University and the Elders’ Gatherings it hosted, which began in 1970, might explain how the site came to be redefined and revitalized. Likely, the new name now used for the site -Kinomagtewapkong – The Teaching Rocks –  dates back to this time of “restor(y)ing” the site.

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4. Access To a Chapter On the Site by Joan Vastokas

Carol Diaz-Granados and James R. Duncan have edited a collection of papers in The Rock-Art of Eastern North America: Capturing Images and Insight  (2004). Chapter 16 – The Peterborough Petroglyphs: Native or Norse? – is a contribution by Joan Vastokas.  The teaser blurb begins –

This chapter discusses the ongoing debate over the Peterborough Petroglyphs and whether they were created by Native Americans or Norsemen. First, a history of the debate is covered positing the various theories. Then, forms of writing that have been compared to the Peterborough Petroglyphs are addressed and their similarities and differences explained. Throughout the chapter, I present evidence that concludes a Native Ameri-…

And they leave it at that! Given the author, we can guess what the conclusion is. Most of the chapter (except for three pages)  can be read here at Google Books.

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5. A Wide-Ranging and Philosophical Approach To the Site and Its Meaning

Charles Lock is currently a Professor of English at the University of Copenhagen, but for twelve years (1983-1995), he taught at the University of Toronto. He has a 15-page paper in a 1994 issue of Semiotica (special edition on Prehistoric Signs)  entitled “Petroglyphs In And Out Of Perspective.”  It is available here.  While written for an academic audience and occasionally an obtuse read (just like this post), it is worth the effort. He uses the Peterborough Petroglyphs to illustrate some of the points he makes about how and why modern scholars study “primitive” art. Here is a brief sample from the article:

Unlike prehistoric artefacts in Europe , but like mediaeval ones, the petroglyphs of North and Central America are still, or have become again, the focus of cult. The most famous petroglyph site in Ontario — near Peterborough — was discovered in 1954, and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources undertook to preserve ‘this important part of our national heritage … for future generations of Canadians’ (Sweetman 1955: 108). Fences of increasing seriousness were built to protect the site from visitors — not only from wear, but from the graffiti that graffiti always invites — until it was recognized that the main damage was caused by the weather. Before their discovery the petroglyphs had been well protected by moss and undergrowth. In the late 1970s the Ministry built a large structure over the entire rock surface; the atmosphere inside is now fully controlled. In 1976 the site was designated a Provincial Park . I first visited the petroglyphs in 1984, and my thought then was that as the petroglyph would not go to the Museum, the Museum had gone to the petroglyph. Sometime between then and my next visit in 1990 a wooden sign appeared, on the path between the car-park and the site, and visitors are now informed that this is a sacred place, honored and used for ritual purposes by Native Americans; non-Natives are asked to behave with respect. Native people are now the guides and wardens of the Park, and there is talk of the Ontario government ‘handing back’ the petroglyphs to Native Americans.

The way we view these petroglyphs has changed radically. No longer a museum, ideologically neutral and spatially homogeneous, the structure belongs to others and is to be entered on sufferance. Should one remove one’s hat? One’s shoes? Voices are lowered. And one certainly gets a ‘romantic thrill’ from seeing on that great rock, at a discreet distance from any carving, the traces of a tobacco offering. Visiting in 1992, however, I noticed not only tobacco and feathers and stones, but also red, yellow, and white ribbon. These ribbons are traditional and authentic, but my aesthetic sense inwardly protested that the effect was tawdry. With petroglyphs as with icons, offerings must be placed in contiguity with the object of devotion, and thus become part of it; one cannot open a site to cultic devotion and then ask that offerings be left elsewhere, to the side. As a visitor, one knows that one’s aesthetic protest would be, if voiced, a mark of disrespect. In a museum, of course, complaints are expected.

Here we have a rare and spectacular instance of a prehistoric artefact which is now serving what we might call a ‘first-order purpose’. Obviously there has been no continuity of cult; the Ojibway Anishinabe band, who now revere the site and care for it, do not pretend that it was ever associated with their ancestors. Whether the contemporary cult is the same or similar to that practiced in prehistoric times is of course unknown; indeed, not everyone is agreed that these petroglyphs ever had sacred significance or were at any time the site of a cult. Probability certainly favors the Ojibway, and whatever the authenticity of the present cult, it must be considered ‘first-order’: there is a consensus among Native people which legitimates the cult, and the ritual has nothing to do with ‘second-order purposes’, the aesthetic and cognitive practices of non-Native viewers. Viewers, spectators, scholars, helpfully raised on the ramp that encircles the rock, prevented by railings from falling (or straying) onto the rock, we notice the little gate through which Natives may pass: the way in, not for viewers but only for participants.

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6. An Alternative History Approach: 

Robert Burcher has developed the unlikely argument that the petroglyphs result from an Anishinaabe hunting party encounter with Celtic sailors some 2000 years ago.  He writes –

The hunters, confounded and frightened, turned back into the safety of the forest. They raced north to a sacred site where they could communicate with their gods. They carved images of the invaders on an expanse of white rock in explanation, perhaps a warning, to their kinsmen who also searched these woods for food and fuel.

With this as the fantastical premise, Burcher’s book The Leather Boat fleshes out a tale in which Celtic-inspired images ended up in the limestone of the central Ontario wilds some 2000 years ago.  Entering a world of fiction requires that the audience suspend its disbelief and accept certain things as “true.” Given the out-of-the-way location of the rock face, it would have had zero value as a place to put a warning to kinsmen; it also assumes they would even be able to “read” the supposedly never-seen-before images hammered into the rocks – especially the one on the book’s front cover of the Celtic ship – correctly!

Burcher is also a WordPress blogger; unlike me, he has a book for sale. See here for details!    Alas, no copies in the Toronto Public Library system to sign out for a quick read.

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Next Post –  We travel to Bon Echo Provincial Park and check out 

The Pictographs of Mazinaw Rock: Listening For Algonquian Echoes